At the End

After a beautiful LONG weekend, I head to work this morning to begin the THIRD week of standardized testing.  As I might have mentioned, I HATE testing with every fiber of my being.  So the fact that my students have already spent almost 14 hours on taking tests since May 14 makes me sad and furious all at the same time.  That's not even to mention the three make up sessions (about 6 more hours) that have taken place for absent students or students who have needed more time.  We have three more tests to give this week (at least 6 more hours), and if all goes well my class will be done by Thursday.  Twenty hours (or more) of testing in three weeks time...there's got to be something better to do.

Fourteen more days left people!

The Northern Lights

As per the norm, the workload after returning from spring break totally negated the vacation.  It's taken a long time to get through the photos of Iceland.  I was a little concerned with my Northern Lights photos because they are taken at night and the settings on the camera are so very different than what I'm used to shooting with.  They seemed to be decent on the LCD screen on the camera, but until I got them in larger size on the laptop I did worry that I didn't capture them well enough.  Thankfully, my amateur skills didn't impede things too much, and I got some nice shots.
I had done some studying about photographing the aurora before I left for my trip and went armed with notes on initial settings and a tripod.  On a side note, I HATE traveling with a tripod and the time it takes, so I often just don't bother.  I am SO glad I brought it for this trip because even those with good cameras didn't get the shots I got because they didn't bring a tripod.  It's hard to stand still for 15-30 seconds while the shutter is open.
What I wasn't prepared for was how different the view was between the naked eye and through the camera lens.  While what we saw with our eyes was pretty cool - oily white/grey lights swirling through the sky, the camera is able to take in the color of the lights that our eyes are not able to see.  Explained here...
Thus, the human eye primarily views the Northern Lights in faint colors and shades of gray and white. DSLR camera sensors don't have that limitation. Couple that fact with the long exposure times and high ISO settings of modern cameras and it becomes clear that the camera sensor has a much higher dynamic range of vision in the dark than people do.
Anyhow, the colors the camera picked up were incredible.
In order to see the Northern Lights there are a few factors that need to be in place.  First, the sky needs to be clear of cloud cover.  Second, they need to viewed in an area with little to no light.  And lastly, which is the tricky part in Iceland, there needs to have been bright sun the day (or two) of the night you see them.  On the day we arrived in Iceland, the sky was partly cloudy with the sun moving in and out of the clouds all day.  We were supposed to go out that night to see the lights, but it was too cloudy to go.  The next day was overcast, so we didn't go that night either.  It snowed all the next day, so no chance of seeing.  The following day was overcast.  At this point we were half way through our trip, and I had to keep talking myself off the ledge, "It will still be a great trip even if I don't see them."  We woke the next day to gorgeous sunny (but so windy and cold) skies, and that night we went out because it was as clear as could be.  The location where we waited was just beautiful and we got there just before complete darkness so I had a chance to set up, get focused before I couldn't see anything, and I had a gorgeous back drop of some mountains topped with snow.  We waited until 12:30/1:00 am wishing them to arrive, but they never did.  While disappointing, I have never seen a clearer more star-filled sky.  On our second to last day, it was again beautifully clear so we went out that night.  We didn't arrive until dark and the location was a Farmer's hotel off to the side of the road so the location wasn't ideal.  I had a much harder time setting up and trying to get the camera in focus.  Murphy's law, right?  Because that was the night they arrived.
About 11:00 the white swirling started.  It was very faint at first and, as I mentioned above, looked like a lot of stars.

After a few minutes of swirling, they then began to cover the sky.  It was still very faint, but to watch it "build" was very cool.  Then the swirling stopped and they seemed to dissipate in front of our eyes.  We waited a bit, watching a clear sky for quite some time.  Then they reappeared.  Once again, it started off as light swirls and streaks, but built in intensity.

 Then they started to spread, and soon the entire sky was covered.  It was fascinating.

I hope that it is not, but this felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Every time I look at these photos, they make me giddy.  It was our second to last night, already in April (they are most prevalent in October-March), I just can't believe how lucky we were.